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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 24 for Windows => Topic started by: casper3127 on July 21, 2018, 10:55:55 am

Title: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: casper3127 on July 21, 2018, 10:55:55 am
Hi there,

any chance about giving a second chance to Tidal's integration (and MQA) into JRiver Media Center?


Cheers.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: JimH on July 21, 2018, 11:44:23 am
No.  You can use the WDM driver to play Tidal using MC's audio engine.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: dtc on July 21, 2018, 12:00:29 pm
Tidal works with WDM for 16/44, but I do not think anyone has gotten Tidal Masters (MQA) (24/88/96) to work directly with WDM in bit perfect mode.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: pompon on July 23, 2018, 02:58:55 pm
No.  You can use the WDM driver to play Tidal using MC's audio engine.
wdm do not work properly in most installation. Driver seem to be very affected by timing and seem to not have enough priority to be glitch free.

When I play tidal through wdn, I lose about 15 first sec of the song. I have many many glitches in the playback.
My PC is top of the line I7.
Change the buffer change anything.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 29, 2018, 11:23:20 am
I have been trying to get Tidal to work with my Windows 10 Pro PC and I am still getting "digital oddities" when I play through JRiver (24.0.41).  At the beginning of every new selection, I get odd digital noises/skips/static sounds and then these recur occasionally through playback.  Is there some "magic setting" to get it to work?  FYI, this is happening even on CD quality music, not just with MQA files.

Thanks,

Mark
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 29, 2018, 11:41:21 am
I ended up stumbling across this link:  https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/WDM_Driver (https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/WDM_Driver)

I experimented around and just went for the limits on the input and output buffers...I tried high/high on the settings, then low/low, then high/low, and low/high. At present I have the output buffer set at 5 ms (JRiver standard reco is 100 ms) and the input buffer set at 500 ms (JRiver standard reco is 50 ms). This appears to work. I've not tried less extreme settings yet, but I will.

Question for those who know more than I do...is there any risk to these settings?

Thanks,

Mark
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: Awesome Donkey on July 29, 2018, 11:52:38 am
Anyone having issues with glitches/stuttering with Tidal MQA masters (at 24/96 or 24/192) and the WDM driver should watch this thread - it's being looked into: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,116637.0.html
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 29, 2018, 01:03:10 pm
Good to know.  That said...my end goal is to output JRiver to a DLNA device and also play tidal through JRiver to the DLNA device.  When I tried playing music from JRiver off my NAS - it worked fine and my DLNA device (a Sonore MicroRendu) played the music perfectly.  When I try to play Tidal through JRiver to the MicroRendu, Tidal locks up.  Every time.  On 2 different devices...a Surface Pro 3 and a desktop PC with 2x the RAM as the Surface and with a faster processor.  The lockups are so bad that JRiver will not even respond to ctrl-alt-del end task and I have to force the computers into a hard shutdown via the power button.

This is unworkable.

Mark
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: swiv3d on July 29, 2018, 03:31:56 pm
Mark
Using your full email address on a website visible to anyone and anything on the internet is kind of asking for a whole lot of spam!
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: Hendrik on July 29, 2018, 04:03:44 pm
WDM cannot play to DLNA, only local audio devices. Not sure thats going to change.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 29, 2018, 08:26:21 pm
WDM cannot play to DLNA, only local audio devices. Not sure thats going to change.

Well, that stinks.  Guess I'll punt on JRiver then.  That's what I really need.

Mark
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 29, 2018, 08:30:44 pm
Mark
Using your full email address on a website visible to anyone and anything on the internet is kind of asking for a whole lot of spam!

Thanks - didn't realize there was an option.  Found it...i think.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 29, 2018, 08:40:52 pm
WDM cannot play to DLNA, only local audio devices. Not sure thats going to change.

After a few minutes thinking about it, I realized the #1 reason I agreed to update to MC24 from MC18 was the hope that the WDM would work and make Tidal work through JRiver.  There was nothing I read that said it was limited to only local devices and that it could not play via DLNA.  I want a refund and I will happily take JRiver off all my devices.

How do I make that happen?

Mark
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: JimH on July 30, 2018, 12:05:45 am
We don't refund purchases.  There is a 30 day trial.  It does work with Tidal.

Does the microRendu support Bluetooth?  Maybe not:

https://www.sonore.us/microRendu.html
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 30, 2018, 07:22:43 am
It DOES NOT work with Tidal reliably at ALL.  If you read what people are writing in this thread and in other places, you will see that.

And, it does not work at all in playing to a media streamer.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: JimH on July 30, 2018, 07:31:00 am
It DOES NOT work with Tidal reliably at ALL.  If you read what people are writing in this thread and in other places, you will see that.
It has been reported that 16/44.1 content works, but higher res from some sources in some modes does not.
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,116637.msg806711.html#msg806711

We've never claimed it could be sent to a "media streamer".  WDM is an audio driver.  You can play to it, but you can't then send to anything other than a DAC.  Here's the wiki topic:  https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/WDM_Driver
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 30, 2018, 12:08:12 pm
It has been reported that 16/44.1 content works, but higher res from some sources in some modes does not.

We've never claimed it could be sent to a "media streamer".  WDM is an audio driver.  You can play to it, but you can't then send to anything other than a DAC.

So, you do realize that a lot of people use Tidal because of its MQA capabilities, which includes higher than 16/44.1 content...right?

Also, you say you've never claimed it (Tidal) could be streamed, yet your own Wiki says:  "Now whenever system audio plays (from web browsers, apps, windows sounds, or video games) it will play to the JRiver Media Center driver. This re-routes the audio through Media Center's DSP stack to whatever output device you have selected as an audio output in Media Center."
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: Awesome Donkey on July 30, 2018, 12:15:19 pm
Personally, I'd recommend having some patience here. The issues with the WDM driver and Tidal are being looked into by Hendrik so I'd wait and see what he has to say like whether or not it can be fixed or a workaround found.

Yes, right now the WDM may not work correctly with Tidal - I've heard it works for some (redbook 16/44.1) unless you do the masters at 24/96 or 24/192. It seems to work correctly for other things including Qobuz, but it not working correctly with Tidal is a known issue and again it's being looked into.

Patience is a virtue, let's see what happens.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: Hendrik on July 30, 2018, 12:24:50 pm
This sure makes it sound like any media can be sent to any audio output device I choose in Media Center.  I've used JRiver to stream to other devices in the past (an R-Pi, for example), so why would I assume it would not stream from Tidal as a source?

You cannot select DLNA devices as an "output device" however. I know you may not care for that distinction, but DLNA are zones, not output devices. I don't think we ever call them that anywhere.
I'm sorry that this wasn't clear from the documentation, but its not wrong.

DLNA does not play "audio streams", it plays files. If you select a file to play, then the file itself is send to the DLNA device. Its not decoded by MC and then streamed to the device, or anything like that.

This is not some arbitrary limitation we impose because we feel like it, but just how DLNA in Media Center works. DLNA renderer are send a request to play a file which it then obtains from Media Center, we don't push media date to the device, which would be required for playback of Live sources to work.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 30, 2018, 02:32:11 pm
Personally, I'd recommend having some patience here. The issues with the WDM driver and Tidal are being looked into by Hendrik so I'd wait and see what he has to say like whether or not it can be fixed or a workaround found.

Yes, right now the WDM may not work correctly with Tidal - I've heard it works for some (redbook 16/44.1) unless you do the masters at 24/96 or 24/192. It seems to work correctly for other things including Qobuz, but it not working correctly with Tidal is a known issue and again it's being looked into.

Patience is a virtue, let's see what happens.

Even if WDM does work correctly, they are saying I won't be able to send Tidal music through JRiver to a networked device (which I can do w/files JRiver pulls from my NAS or other sources).  This was a feature I assumed would be present once JRiver handled Tidal properly, but it does not and they are saying it will not.  (And, I do use Tidal masters...it's one of the main reasons I got into Tidal.)  Roon is working perfectly, so even though it's pricey - it works.  Perfectly.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: mkcarnut on July 30, 2018, 02:39:16 pm
You cannot select DLNA devices as an "output device" however. I know you may not care for that distinction, but DLNA are zones, not output devices. I don't think we ever call them that anywhere.
I'm sorry that this wasn't clear from the documentation, but its not wrong.

DLNA does not play "audio streams", it plays files. If you select a file to play, then the file itself is send to the DLNA device. Its not decoded by MC and then streamed to the device, or anything like that.

This is not some arbitrary limitation we impose because we feel like it, but just how DLNA in Media Center works. DLNA renderer are send a request to play a file which it then obtains from Media Center, we don't push media date to the device, which would be required for playback of Live sources to work.
I appreciate the after-the-fact explanation, but just to be clear...with JRiver I can indeed select & send music to DLNA devices like a Sonore microRendu or my Raspberry Pi.  Call them a "zone" or an "output device"I can send JRiver to them.  I just can't send Tidal - and that's an issue for how I'd planned to use it.
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: Awesome Donkey on August 01, 2018, 06:28:33 am
Looks like Hendrik found the cause for the glitches and it looks like it'll be fixed in the next release.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,116637.msg808579.html#msg808579
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: dtc on August 14, 2018, 11:00:12 am
MC 24.0.46 seems to solve most of the high res issues with WDM. I have tried Tidal Masters and they play fine with the new version.  The only problem I see is short glitches when manual changing tracks, something I do not do often when streaming. Hendrik is aware of that issue.

Others should try the new version and report back. This is great progress!
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: Manfred on August 14, 2018, 11:26:09 am
Playing the 24 bit 96 KHz Anna Netrebko Album in exclusive mode in Tidal Masters plays now without glitches.

Chain: PC (Tidal Masters)->MC(WDM)->Logitech Speaker.

Great Work!
Title: Re: JRiver & Tidal (MQA)
Post by: Hilton on August 15, 2018, 08:24:36 pm
There are also other ways to stream Tidal via DLNA to a zone or device in MC. It may not directly address everything you want but I think below goes someway to addressing one of your issues of streaming Tidal to a DLNA device or MC zone.

The WDM fixes Hendrik has been working on will also address the buffering issues for Tidal.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,113237.msg793076.html#msg793076